[mythtv-users] Whatever happened to "Keep until I delete"?

[Michael T. Dean]

On 04/12/2015 08:13 PM, Hika van den Hoven wrote:
> Hoi Matt,
>
> Monday, April 13, 2015, 1:39:42 AM, you wrote:
>
>> I just went into Myth and noticed that I only have the two most recent
>> episodes of Better Call Saul, even though I've specified max number of
>> recordings to be zero and auto-delete is unchecked in MythWeb. I assume
>> that these options are superceded by the default recording/storage rule
>> that deletes recordings after they've been watched.
>> Back in the olden tymes of Myth, I remember a "Keep until I delete" option
>> on recordings but I can't find any such thing in the Front End UI or
>> MythWeb. I assume it no longer exists? Is there an alternative way to tell
>> Myth to keep all recordings of a show until I manually delete? I haven't
>> messed with recording profiles; could something be in there, or am I just
>> missing something obvious? Thanks in advance.
>
> As far as I know and as my experience goes, nothing gets automatically
> deleted unless the space is needed or you have set max recordings.
> If the space is needed it first looks for

recordings in the Deleted recording group, then for

>   livetv to delete and then
> for recordings that are set to auto expire and are watched, with the
> lowest priority first. If none of those are found it looks for
> unwatched recordings set to auto expire, again starting with the
> lowest priority.

However, if you do not enable the "Watched before unwatched" setting, it 
will ignore the watched flag and expire solely based on "priority".

> Priority is calculated on the basis of several things, like recording
> priority and age.

depending on the Auto-Expire method you've chosen:

Auto-Expire method
  - Oldest show first
  - Lowest priority first
  - Weighted time/priority combination
Method used to determine which recorded shows to delete first. Live TV 
recordings will always expire before normal recordings.

with the default being, "Oldest show first."


> As far as I know recordings not set to auto expire should never be
> touched.

Exactly.  They can be deleted due to max episodes.  To keep an episode 
of a recording whose rule enables max episodes, you must "Preserve this 
episode" under MENU|Storage Options in the Watch Recordings screen, as 
well as mark the episode to "Disable Auto Expire."

>   In Mythweb you can easily see if a recording is set to
> auto expire.
> I don't know what happens when there is no space and nothing to
> delete.

Bad things. :)

>   I guess the recording fails.

Yep.  And any future recordings that MythTV attempts to write to that 
file system will fail.  (MythTV will not mark a file system as "do not 
use" because your including it in the Storage Group says it will be 
ready to use, and MythTV will not know that it will not be able to make 
more room on the file system when it chooses which file system to use, 
so it will keep scheduling more recordings for writing to that file 
system--and, depending on the Storage Group Disk Scheduler you've 
specified, it may choose to /only/ write to that full, unusable file 
system).  And, depending on the usage of the file system (whether it's 
used for other important things), more things--including and up to the 
system as a whole--will fail.

>   But I haven't been there.
> Last year I have had an incident, where minimum free space somehow got
> raised to extreme height (multiple Tb) and a lot get deleted I hadn't
> watched jet. But none not set to auto expire. I guess it was a bit
> flipping by accident.
> So you should check if they are set to auto expire and maybe change
> that in the recording profile and to what value minimum free space is
> set. You can see the latter in the backend log.

Yep.  Good advice all around.  Just wanted to add a bit of 
clarification.  :)

Mike